UB Conference Examines Bioethics and the Philosophy of Medicine

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Plato’s Academy, North Tonawanda
Campus (PANTC) Reading Group and the UB Department of Philosophy
will present the conference “Bioethics and the Philosophy of
Medicine” Aug. 2-3 on the University at Buffalo North
Campus.

The conference, which will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30
p.m. in 280 Park Hall, will address four principle areas: death,
brain death and the human identity problem; intention, consent and
responsibility; health, development and disease; and harm, autonomy
and policy.

PANTC is the real, but somewhat facetious name of a Western New
York reading group in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine that
has been meeting every month for the past few years in the back
room of J.P. Bullfeathers restaurant on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.
It is funded by the Hourani Fund in the UB philosophy department;
most of the speakers at this conference are regular attendees. They
include faculty members and graduate students from UB and faculty
members from the philosophy departments of Fredonia State College,
Niagara University and Canisius College.

The conference’s keynote address, “Abortion and
Thomson’s People vs. Seeds Case,” will be presented at
4:30 p.m. Aug. 2 by John Martin Fischer, Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy, University of California, Riverside. Fischer teaches
ethics, philosophy of law, theories of distributive justice and
philosophy of religion, and serves as president of the Pacific
Division of the American Philosophical Association.

His talk will address the arguments made in “A Defense of
Abortion,” a famous essay first published in 1971 by moral
philosopher Judith Jarvis Thompson in which she employs thought
experiments to argue for the moral permissibility of induced
abortion. Her imaginative examples and controversial conclusions
have made the paper what philosopher William Parent calls perhaps
“the most widely reprinted essay in all of contemporary philosophy.”

Speakers from the UB Department of Philosophy, College of Arts
and Sciences, include:

Barry Smith, PhD, professor and director of the National Center
for Ontological Research, who will speak about “Diseases,
Diagnoses, Signs and Symptoms” in various ontologies of
medicine

Lewis Powell, assistant professor of philosophy, an specialist
in early modern philosophy and the philosophy of language

Catherine Nolon, UB graduate student in philosophy, who is
conducting research on the metaphysics and ethics of organ
donation

Peter Koch, UB graduate student in philosophy and author of
“An Alternative to an Alternative to Brain Death” in
the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
(2009)

Yuichi Minemura, UB graduate student and lecturer in
philosophy, who focuses on the metaphysical foundations of modern
controversies regarding brain death.

In addition, Stephen Wear, PhD, UB associate professor of
medicine, will speak about “Informed Consent: Theory and
Practice.” Wear teaches the philosophy of medicine and is
co-director of the Center for Clinical Ethics and Humanities in
Health Care.

Representatives from the philosophy departments of Niagara
University, Fredonia State College and Canisius College also will
speak at the conference. They are:

Neil Feit, PhD, professor and chair, Department of Philosophy,
Fredonia State College, whose research interests are philosophy of
mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics and value
theory

John Keller, PhD, assistant professor of philosophy, Niagara
University, who specializes in metaphysics and philosophy of
language

Steve Kershnar, PhD, professor, Fredonia State College, a
specialist in political philosophy, legal philosophy and
ethics.

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